Simplifiying Semantic Web

As Tim Berner-Lee’s concept of the web was:

“My dream for the Web has two parts. In the first, I see the Web becoming a much more powerful means for collaboration among people. In the second, collaborations extend to computers. Machines become capable of analysing all the data on the Web – the contents, links and transactions between people and computers”

The Semantic Web accomplishes this concept.

The Semantic Webs’ job is to make computer understand, find and integrate web pages that are understandable for human beings. This is possible because metadata is added to web pages which recognize and exploit relationships between items. These metadata are shared to various applications. Metadata is one of the pillars of semantic web. The other is Ontologies. Ontologies create similarities between items from different gatherings described with different vocabularies.

There are various semantic web projects that are working out well such as commerce and medicine. The Semantic Web is more effective in specific subject because there are more metadata that match to each other and the specific area users are more willing to improve to the metadata and develop ontologies.

The Semantic Web is not an application provider but it provides applications, it provides standards which are used to add applications through intelligent linking. The next step is to use Semantic Web for library web services.

Burke, M. (2009, March 6). The Semantic Web and the digital library. Aslib Proceedings New Information Perspective, pp. 316-322A.

Evaluating Online Learning Resources

It is important that teachers or evaluators that are in the process of creating learning resources for online learning must consider the learning resources in areas such as the content/format, instructional design, evaluation/assessment and social considerations.

Content/Format

The material is significant to the aims and objectives of the curriculum. It should be accurate, completed and up-dated. They should be easy to use and durable so that they are suitable for the classroom.

Instructional Design

The content should be in the form of activities not lecture-based. It should be prepared in a way that students should work both in groups and individually. The Material should promote the idea to students to ask questions, think, react and decide. Choice and flexibility are to be given to meet the students’ requirements for different abilities, learning styles and interests. The content should be in guided form. Support from teacher should be also available.

Evaluation/Assessment

The learning resources should be supportive for the individual to continue the learning. It should provide both formative and summative evaluation. The assessment should be given both after each module of the course and at the end of the whole course. The assessment is to provide information that the students can relate to.

Social Consideration

The content should be sensitive to any gender, sexual orientation, culture and heritage. It is important to promote equality and support students’ self-esteem. Students with special needs should be able to integrate themselves with the material as being part of the class. Good role models should be used when they are included in the learning material.

Apart from these, the learning material could take into consideration the audience that it is going to target. Meaning that, the resources used are to be adequate for the classroom situation. Also, the age and the native language should be included in the list of things that are needed to be evaluated before producing the learning resources.

Audience Considerations

To help students, the text organization should be aided with tables of contents, glossaries, chapter titles, identify sub-topics and summaries. As the learning material can be accessed by students from different countries the resource language should have a vocabulary that can be understood by many if not all, clear sentence structure and development that clearly identify the main idea. Using useful graphics to enhance the main ideas are important and they should be placed near the text that it corresponds to.

Media Considerations

Any videos used should engage the students’ attention. There must be a balance between education and entertainment. The length of presentation should not be too long as it will lose the students’ interest. The resource should give the opportunity to think about it. Also, the resource should be about a significant situation. A digital resources provide the students with interactivity while they are learning and also give feedback. It should be customizable to the needs of the students. This type of resources must be accessible by the majority of the target students.

Various. (Revised 2002). General Learning Resources Consideration. In Evaluating, Selecting and Managing Learning Resources: A Guide (pp. 13-24). British Columbia - Ministry of Education.

Semantic Web

The word semantic is defined as “meaning” and thus semantic web means web with a meaning. In more detail one can say that it is a web which is able to set up statements which are understood by both humans and computers. These statements are built through a number of syntax rules which make all statements able to be understood by some, if not all, computer applications. Following this, it becomes evident that semantic web is not, as what a large number of people believe, a number of web pages linked to each other. On the contrary it is the description of the relationship and properties between items mentioned on the web pages.

However, when mentioning semantic web, one cannot just look at the definition of semantic web and stop there, as there are much more details at which one have to take a look. The following are some of the issues that one has to think about:

(1) Language.

When using semantic web, even the language changes. In fact, Resource Description Framework (RDF) is used. This language is used for describing the information and assets on the web. These are basically files which are to be filled with information to make it possible for computer programs to be able to search, collect, analyze and process information. Indeed since information about particular topics is saved in RDF files, web applications can collect information from different sources and present it in a more significant manner. One example of RDF which is used to build semantic web applications is RSS.

(2) Web Agents.

Differing from normal searches for information on the web, semantic web cannot be searched for using the normal searches. In fact, to access semantic web one needs to have a special software, called semantic web agents or semantic web services which are used to help the user find what information is looking for on semantic web.

(3) Security

How can a person using semantic web be sure if other sellers and buyers are to be trusted? To do this a person using semantic web must hold a copy of the credit cards information, bank information, semantic records and also social security information of that particular person. This information can then be places in an RDF through which the semantic web agent can determine if a particular buyer or seller is trustful or not.

(4) Payment

The best payment method to be developed and used when it comes to semantic web, is a deposit account which can be accessed through the internet. This account has to be specifically for deposits only so that anyone can deposit in it by just knowing your ID (similar to using PayPal)

If you think about anymore issues that one need to think about and discuss, please do mention them.

Demystifying E-learning Standards

What are e-learning standards? What do people who implement and design e-learning understand by these standards?

E-learning standards where developed to make content created flexible enough to be used in different contexts. Learning content and resources can be more sensible and articulated for students and developers. E-learning standards are agreements that the people using e-learning can agree upon. E.g. How e-learning content should be tagged. These will be proposed by specification group which then present it to an official board for standardization.

Standards can be de facto which means that they are being followed by the whole or most of the e-learning community before they are actually standardized. For example, XML is a de facto standard as it was adapted by most of the Web developers. Standards should be able to be updated and accept new concepts. Hence, learning content can be integrated but also content from other sources. Another type of standards is de jure which means that they are specified by the Law and are certified by an official body.

Standards to e-learner designers and implementers mean that they have unambiguous and major capabilities:

• Content portability – content can be removed from the original context and used in another context.
• Granularity – smaller units of information give raise to learning at the needed moment
• Interoperability – e-learning applications can share raw data and content but also different applications can access and interchange content.

Standards are important because they have been adopted by the e-learning community and hey can protect the investment done in an e-learning system.

Ref:

Singh H, Reed, C. (2002). Demystifiying E-learning Standards. Industrial and Commercial Training, 65-68.

Engaging parents in E-learning.

Thinking about e-learning, one question that comes up to my mind is: What would take place of the so called Parents’ days if we implement an e-learning system? In the present education system, we have the students going to schools and the teachers keeping up-to-date records about them. These records are then shown to parents on parents’ day to know what progress their children are making and where they have to improve.

Can the parents know this if the students get involved in an e-learning system? In my opinion, yes there have to be some kind of parental involvement in the e-learning system that would be implemented. One example of engaging parents into e-learning might be the involvement of e-portfolios where the students upload their work. These e-portfolios would be used for the parents to know their students’ progress and also to be able to comment and give feedback on their children’s progress which might be of a great benefit to their children as they would be able to know what their parents think about their work. The advantage behind this is that this system might become a social experience where the parents are able to discuss education with their children. They would be able to ask questions, understand, praise and give feedback to their own children.

However, the problem is that parents are not really good at giving feedback when it comes to their own children because they tend to praise them too much or conversely they would be too critical about their children. Both of which situations do not help the process to improve learning. On the other hand there might be some parents who do not contribute at all. The reasons behind this might be that parents do not have time to view their children’s work online, or even that the parents do not know how to use a computer on their own. Due to this most of the parents would have to view the portfolio together with their child where the child would act as a teacher leading the parent to the e-portfolio. Following this one would probably find that parents of older students would not give too much feedback or none at all, as we all know that at a certain age the relationship between parents and students tend to be in a disappointing situation!

This is the only method of parental involvement that came up to my mind so far. Do you have any other ideas? If you do, please do share.

SCORM capabilities and advantages

SCORM is a collection of specifications taken from various sources so that e-learning can take place with the following in mind: interoperability, reusability and accessible Web-based content. Indeed, SCORM-compliant learning object is a collection of resources which is described by metdata, organized as one or more learning objects (aka SCO), and is intended to be delivered to the learner via a Web-browser.

SCORM-compliant LMS system accepts any SCORM-compliant content and make it available to the LMSs’ users. This system delivers and launches the content to the learner in the provided run-time environment which must meet certain requirements defined by the SCORM specification and conformance requirement document. The content which is delivered to the learner is launched in a web browser window.

It is possible to have a SCORM implementation without the use of an internet or a network but a closed intranet will also be fine.

Some advantages of SCORM are that once you published it, it can be accessed very easily everywhere you want, thus content life is longer. Content is difficult to become obsolete since it is easier to justify ongoing compatibility with standard content. Also, you do not need to worry about technical incompatibilities, but you are free to get pieces of information from here and there and mix the content as you wish.

I suggest that you visit this site http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/resources/toolbook/community_scorm.html as it helped me a lot to further understand SCORM and all its stuff.

The future of E-Learning

In broad terms, one can say that education and technology are intertwined together where ones educational experience is constantly being enhanced and improved through the use of technology. Nowadays, it is commonly said that in the near future, every person will experience the need to learn how to use technology in order to improve his/her education. In the meantime, those left out from such technological transition are in a risk of experiencing alienation and isolation from the rest of the society. These people very often feel left out and are labeled as the ‘non technological’ people.

Admit or not, the internet has contributed in making the acquiring of new knowledge quicker and vast. Never-ending volumes of information and knowledge are just a click away. Now, every student has the ability to roam around on the internet and benefit from by increasing and stimulating more his creativity.

Moreover, the idea to emerge e-learning with the training portfolio is becoming increasingly popular. Nowadays e-learning has become accepted as an effective educational tool within the schools. Adding to this, it is believed that in the near future, new approaches will be used as well such as wireless and 3G which will make the flexibility aspect more possible. Thus, it is up to each teacher and educational instructor to learn how and when to use this new phenomenon and facility to its best advantage. The main aim is to initiate students’ motivation and make them feel engrossed in the educational experience.

How reliable is the content presented on the internet? Standards were set with the prime intention so as to ensure that all data on the web is described in the correct way and gives the relevant useful information that is useful to the user. Otherwise the whole concept of the semantic web becomes irrelevant. Pre-set standards are fundamentally important so as to guarantee that the information presented on the internet is compliant and follows all the required specifications and requirements.

If these standards are respected and overhauled, quality of data is enriched and thus e-learning will be even more encouraged to be incorporated within the organizations and schools.

Significant indications show that as more people are getting connected online, the internet will get further infiltrated into one’s life. As a consequence this will result in a greater need to incorporate education over the internet. The fact that e-learning is getting cheaper to implement and more technology platforms and tools are becoming accessible, all this promotes more the realization of social learning.

References and further relevant readings:

E-learning is future? www.le-learning.in. Accessed from: http://www.e-learning.in/e-learning-is-future.html

Spender, D. (2002). E-Learning and its future. Global Summit 2002. Accessed from: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN007782.pdf

The future of e-learning is social learning. Accessed from: http://www.slideshare.net/janehart/the-future-of-elearning-is-social-learnng

learning in the 21st Century

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L2XwWq4_BY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJYpsB3o0Uc&feature=related

These 2 videos caught my attention as they were amongst the videos which came up after searching for elearning clips on YouTube. They mainly emphasize the need of a shift in our teaching in the 21^st century, where everything seems to revolve more around the technology we are surround with in this era. In fact in Dr.James H.Billington’s foreword he mentions how technology is changing the way students learn. Although elearning is not specifically mentioned as a tool, one can see the criteria mentioned to teach in a 21^st century mentioned through these 2 videos, are very much similar to the possibilities elearning gives to a learner. There are 3 important questions which we need to ask when we come to learning in the 21^st century:

1. What are the essential skills and knowledge?
2. How do we create powerful learning for all students to ensure they get the skills and knowledge they need in this technology based world?
3. What kind of learning organisations do we need for such education to occur?

Having thought about these questions, I can see elearning as one of the learning organisations which can provide the multiple ways of delivering learning which Randy DeHoff speaks about in the clip. This is because through elearning we as teachers can organise content which comprises not only of static displays of text but can also include multimedia content. Having said this, such content can create powerful learning opportunities to all students, engaging different abilities within the different students.

In the Library of congress clip, it is mentioned that our students need to develop complex skills to be successful in today’s society. One of such skills is the ability for the students to direct their own learning and ability to critically think to be able to use the information available in an efficient manner. Such an environment can be set through an elearning platform, where the student is presented with a library of all types and formats of information designed by the teacher, to make the best use of it in a way that the student is not only learning the content but also developing such skills.

“In the 21^st century each of us must be a learner and a teacher”

I think this is one of the most important phrases told during the clip as it shows the importance that everyone is ready to share knowledge and everyone has the right to access and learn from the knowledge shared. From what I’ve understood about elearning, I believe this is one, if not the main, fundamental concept of elearning; where everyone creates learning objects which are shared. The idea of a learning object which according to IEEE a Learning object is an entity, digital or non digital that can be used, reused again or invite during the learning process (IEEE – LOM,2002).

Keeping in mind this scenario, where everyone can create small chunks of content knowledge, known as learning objects, and share them through an online platform, a particular issue arises:

How can I be sure that the learning object is reliable?

What is the basic skeleton of a learning object?

What does it have to contain and what doesn’t have to contain?

The creation of learning object standards helps give guidelines to every person who can contribute on an elearning platform when organising learning object. Upon researching on learning object standards, I realised there are several standards to make sure that the learning objects produced are useful.

I found an interesting paper online which has some very interesting information about elearning standards :

http://www.cdac.in/html/pdf/Session6.1.pdf

This covers the need needs and issues of an elearning infrastructure; it also outlines the needs for standards and which major companies work to set such standards.

I think the one thing which really worries me, so to speak, is how ready are people to take the work in creating learning objects, and put them online for all to use? I think not everyone feels at ease having his/her work being completely shareable. I believe this is one of the main hurdles we may find in the implementation of elearning systems, especially from what I hear and see here in Malta’s educational system.

A SCORM course

As we all know, SCORM is a standard for online learning.

Communication is very important in teaching. We all encourage students to discuss any problems they encounter. If the students do not tell their teacher about a difficulty, s/he might assume that all students understood the topic/ lesson very well when the story might be all different. That is why communication and keeping track of the students’ progress is important.

A SCORM course is equivalent to a good teacher. A SCORM course has its lesson plans, knows its students, knows the names of the students, tracks students’ progress, tracks what a particular student studied, what has been revised and even the students’ marks – whether a pass or a fail has been obtained.

Therefore, a SCORM course is the same as a teacher since all the activities that are carried out by a teacher are carried out by it. Moreover, this type of course can make sure that to start lesson 2, lesson 1 has to be understood.
An advantage of SCORM is that the learner has freedom on how to use it. Moreover, the content can be shared with others and the students/ learners can be at any school.

In my opinion, a SCORM course is like a ‘digital’ teacher. Both the teacher and the learner benefit from it.

For further detail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzxNwWvmwf4

Digital learners

Attention is an important element in learning; if students’ attention is not gained, effective learning will never occur. We as 21^st century teachers should seek for technological resources and educational tools which engage students in their learning, thus students pay more attention.

This video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egRVc3R1u1U helped to intensely reflect upon very important issues that we as teachers are facing and will continue to face in our future teaching careers. We need to take into consideration how students learn therefore their learning styles. We have the responsibility to facilitate their learning through pleasant and enjoyable experiences and ultimately address their learning needs.

21^st century students are known as digital learners wherein in their personal lives they use technology frequently. Because of this technological phenomenon we need to create effective technological learning environments. Being Computing teachers we may take it for granted that our subjects on their own use technology but we still have to integrate technological resources in our subjects’ curriculum to fully gain students’ attention and participation since nowadays technology is an indispensable aspect in their lives. We have to reach our students through this technological aspect to entirely engage them in their learning experiences.

The WWW has a lot of effective potentials which can be exploited educationally by teachers. Through internet, teachers can dynamically teach, engage and reach students. There exist various web tools which can be integrated in teaching and learning such as wikis, blogs, games, forums, webquests, podcasts, e-portofolios, virtual worlds etc.

As the video illustrates, we should engage students enthusiastically in their learning rather than upset and annoy them through traditional teaching and learning. Thus e-learning systems would be the best solution to attract students where mostly all web tools can be incorporated in this environment and used actively by all students outside school premises. E-learning systems connect not only students’ altogether but also teachers, parents and other stakeholders. Hence building up communities where they can share ideas, information and even opportunities at a distance through technological means.

E-learning in Malta

On Thursday, 29^th July 2010, while having a look at the online version of the Maltese newspaper Times of Malta, I came across an article named: “E-learning: It’s all about the students, teachers and parents.” Since I am interested in reading about computing and since my dissertation concerns E-learning, this article kept me reading.

Basically, the article was about two local non-governmental schools which have adopted an e-learning system by having their own e-learning platform. The two schools mentioned were the Chiswick House School and St. Martin’s College, in both of which the students have took on the e-learning system.

The principal of the two schools, Patrick Tabone, explained that when choosing an e-learning platform one has to make sure that it offers personalized learning where the work is usually project-based. The students need also to be able to develop their communication with others together as well as their teamwork skills, apart from their creativity. It is also important that the platform is reachable from both teachers and students in a comfortable manner where communication methods such as forums are available. Even the sharing of materials (such as documents, images and videos) between teachers and students must be available and easy to do.

However, the need of this kind of technology is not yet seen to be adequate for Maltese state schools as the Maltese government has still not decided about including it in the educational system even though it was explained that e-learning will substitute schools. The only instance where e-learning was introduced in Malta before these two independent schools was for higher education. Could it be that the Maltese are afraid of this system? Could it be that they have the wrong perception of e-learning? Quite a large number of people believe that e-learning means that schools will be completely abolished.

“International experience clearly shows that no e-learning platform can, or should try to be, a substitute for face-to-face teaching and learning, but it can be an excellent complementary tool. Since the online world will certainly be an important fact of our students’ future life, a closed, monitored, online community such as the one we are creating is also a safe way for our students to learn how to navigate the net safely.” (Tabone, 2010)

The idea behind e-learning is to start a learning process adequate and available for everyone. This system has to be started discreetly and its usage can be increased according to the comfort and adaptation of those using it. As Tabone said, the platform can also be monitored, through portfolios and tracking systems to make sure that the students are safe while they can access their information easily. Due to this, students would have to access their profiles through personalized logins and so they are kept safe while they are learning more effectively. Apart from that, an e-learning system makes it easier to develop communication with parents as they can be engaged in the system and so are able to check out on their children.

“We believe that Malta can become the hub of e-learning excellence that will empower and accelerate the development of Malta as a knowledge economy,” (Francois Grech, executive director at Exigy).

You can read the full article by following this link:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/technology/view/20100729/news/e-learning-it-s-all-about-the-students-teachers-and-parents